The studio responsible for the multiplayer component of Spec Ops: The Line, whose lead designer called it a "cancerous growth" foisted upon the game by publisher 2K Games, defended its work in a statement today.

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In a feature published earlier this week by Polygon, Cory Davis, formerly of Spec Ops developer Yager, ripped the multiplayer as inessential to the story the studio was trying to tell. "2K was relentless in making sure that it happened—even at the detriment of the overall project and the perception of the game," he said.

Darkside Game Studios, the developer responsible for Spec Ops' multiplayer, said this today:

There are a lot of positive topics covered in the recent Polygon article about Spec Ops: The Line. However, one clarification needs to be made about the multiplayer mode: Darkside Game Studios was brought onto Spec Ops towards the tail end of the project and revamped the entire multiplayer design. The deadline was tight, the demands were high, and Darkside did a great job according to focus tests, reviewers and players. Cory Davis himself followed up on his Twitter account: "Darkside Games did a great job with the time / resources they were given. They finalized and shipped a historically troubled Multiplayer." His concerns originated prior to Darkside's involvement and stemmed from his opinion that the game should contain no multiplayer at all. Fortunately, for the core fans of Spec Ops multiplayer, this was an outlying opinion.

Davis, to Polygon had said, "The multiplayer game's tone is entirely different, the game mechanics were raped to make it happen, and it was a waste of money. No one is playing it, and I don't even feel like it's part of the overall package - it's another game rammed onto the disk like a cancerous growth."